


Alone In The Mall: A Resident Evil Story

by MrSelfDestruct97



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Action, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Drama, Drug Use, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Gen, Survival Horror, Suspense, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:09:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrSelfDestruct97/pseuds/MrSelfDestruct97
Summary: September 1998.As the pernicious t-Virus spreads unchecked throughout Raccoon City and the situation reaches that of a critical disaster, five survivors find themselves trapped in a shopping mall-turned-bloodbath. Surrounded by unrelenting masses of the undead and other various biological monstrosities, the survivors soon come to the realization that escape from the mall is only the beginning.An unflinchingly dark, gritty and macabre love letter to both Capcom's eminent survival horror franchise and long-time fans alike; this self-contained story goes in-depth into the lore of the series, following the darkest hours of the t-Virus outbreak.





	1. Foreword

Just a couple of words before we begin our tour into the depths of survival horror, the obvious is that this is a not-for-profit piece of self-glorified fanfiction; a labour of love to a franchise that has defined a large portion of my life. For that reason, I decided to approach writing this story with the same sense of severity and importance I would with my own original novels, with the complete understanding and intention that at the expense of endless hours of my time, money and energy, there will be no paycheck, no recognition, possibly a cease and desist, and my work holds about as much weight on the sea of _BIOHAZARD_ canon that a lewd Chris/Wesker fic or questionable _Sonic_ crossover would. That's all fine and dandy because I'm doing this if only for my love of the franchise and the world it has created if nothing else. I own nothing of this franchise, any and all appreciation should go to the many game developers who work hard for many restless hours to reach a deadline and release a finished product worthy of our admiration, they deserve all the praise they can get.

My journey with the franchise began before my birth and continues to this day, unlike many of you, I didn't have the fortune of being old enough to experience these games as they were released. Instead, it began with my father picking up a copy of the original game for the PlayStation in early 1997 and spending endless hours roaming through that mansion, likely shooting zombies, unlocking doors, screaming at the lack of inventory space and running out of ink ribbons - all while my pregnant mother was forced to watch. I think that rubbed off on lil' fetus me because I spent the first seven years of my life attached to another series about a morally-questionable corporation creating biological monsters that return to life and start eating poor and hapless people - of course, that series was_ Jurassic Park_. A few months after gaining access to the marvels of home internet in mid-2005, I happened across a low-quality version of the CG intro to _Resident Evil 3_ while browsing through various _Angelfire, Freewebs_ and _Geocities_ websites and within a short time afterwards I was engorging myself in a series which to that point had been completely foreign to me. I spent weeks on end visiting numerous fan communities, boards and websites and the official flash sites. Full of information and screenshots of characters and monsters from games I hadn't even played - and writing my own earliest (albeit terrible) _Resident Evil_ fanfictions. I still recall fond memories of waking up on Christmas that year to open my presents that my father had gifted me and being greeted with _Code Veronica X, Outbreak_ and_ Resident Evil 4_. The following year, it was a ton of _Resident Evil_ action figures from my aunt, a screenplay of the first film signed by the main cast and director from my mom, and a DIY plastic and aluminum t-Virus vial that my uncle made himself from a drawing I did, and in that time I joined numerous roleplaying communities (one of which_ Alone In The Mall_ takes its name and is very loosely based upon), made 2/4's of a shoddy _fan film_, spent hours slicing at ganados, running from zombie elephants and grew up on countless _Resident Evil_ AMV's and the simply fantastic amount of beloved parody content from the fanbase, and while many of the websites and communities I grew up with are no longer around, I stay proud knowing the fandom lives on in a new generation, with new communities, fans, and content creators.

It should be noted that _Alone In The Mall_ is not a _Resident Evil_ story **_per se_**, it's rather a separate entity foremost, an individual tale set against the backdrop of the _Resident Evil_ universe that follows a rag-tag team of survivors as they attempt to survive a week in the hellscape of Raccoon City at the height of the 1998 viral outbreak. Yet, I can't begin to express how many hours of research I poured over the files and journals of events found in_ Resident Evil 2, 3, Umbrella/Darkside Chronicles_ and the _Outbreak_ series in an attempt to build an accurate, detailed and sensical timeline of events for these characters to harmlessly weave between; and while there is an array of returning characters from the franchise (some obscure, others beloved) and much overlap between this story and the events of the main games, out of respect to the canon and the story the Capcom has crafted this is not a story that will feature the adventures of Mr._ Kennedy, _Ms._ Valentine_ or the _Redfield duo_ embarking in any shenanigans, their stories can be found in the official series of games, _which you should go buy and play if you haven't already._

Sincerely,  
**Todd Cooper,** author of _**Alone In The Mall.**_

_(PS: By the way, have you noticed that everyone in real life walks with tank controls? Seriously, try strafing side-to-side_ _as characters do in video games now, it feels very clumsy and awkward, much easier to y' know turn and walk in that direction.)_


	2. Prelude

**Owen Anderson  
** **#14 - Houston Street Apartments  
** **September 24th, 1998 - 17:39:55 CT  
**

* * *

They were arguing again.

The voices of the ever-rowdy drunk next door and his resilient daughter erupted from the other side of the wall. This wasn't uncommon, it had become a daily routine that they - like clockwork - would swear at the top of their lungs, unaware or perhaps uncaring that their muffled words had pulsed through the thin wooden walls of the shabby apartment building in which they lived. Owen often wondered if he should interfere somehow; by banging loudly on the wall, knocking on the front door - anything at all to disperse the unruly argument, but he never did. 

Instead, he was forced to listen to the same thing happen every day, almost as if it were a rehearsed stage play. The daughter would almost always come wandering out of the apartment a short time later; tears streaming from her eyes and a large red mark or a black eye from where her father had decided to strike her. Owen figured that, at her age, this girl should’ve run far away from her abusive father a long time ago, but like a puppy on a leash she inevitably came back to suffer his brand of alcoholic abuse yet again.

One particularly raucous night, Owen had decided out of pure curiosity to follow her downstairs to see where she would vanish to and found her sleeping in the laundromat. Her name was Amber, but that's all he really knew, or perhaps, cared to know about her. She talked to him more than he talked to her, maybe it was because he was the only “friend” that she had. She would come knocking on his door in the early hours of the morning, and he always knew it was her because nobody else ever did anyways. Usually, it was just to come in and talk to him. For hours on end, she would rant about things that he could never seem to memorize or keep track of, which led him to believe that she never really cared if he was paying attention, she just needed someone to, someone to whom she could vent her frustrations, no matter if he was the right guy to talk to.

Eventually, she had started finding new reasons to keep his company, bringing him his mail when it piled up downstairs and presenting him with random baked goods that she made herself -- of which he didn't have the lack of heart to tell her tasted like pieces of cardboard that had been assaulted by cheap icing. Frequenting his slummy apartment more and more often, dressing her ‘best’ around him, naturally and casually touching him, brushing her fingers through his hair, and attempting to hold his hand or caress his leg. He wasn't sure if she was acting this way to get his attention or if she was just generally unaware of how hands-on she was, but he hoped it was the latter. It was not her fault, of course, but Owen simply _ wasn't interested _ in the least. It wasn’t that she was bothersome nor that she wasn't physically attractive, but in either case, that meant nothing to him. He had just finally given up on the whole idea of relationships, his last one had made sure of that. He wasn’t heartless enough to sleep with Amber, as she had likely wanted, nor had the stones to tell her off, so, in her presence, he simply zoned out, vanished, the same way he always did.

Owen had learned the painful way that relationships involved metamorphic change, commitment and two people growing together as a family through all the rough patches and ugly faults that life offered -- maybe he was too judgmental, but the one thing Owen wanted in his life was stability, and for him, at the current moment, that stability consisted of living in this shabby apartment, spending his free time drinking at the local dive bar, listening to his favorite tapes, and maintaining as minimal connection to the outside world as humanly possible, and unfortunately for little Amber, he felt that there was little chance of keeping that admittedly fragile peace with an emotionally unstable girl who couldn't seem to escape the constant physical, emotional and possibly sexual abuse from her deadbeat father. 

_ No, rather,  _ that first half was the excuse, a lie that he had fabricated for himself to believe in. For here, in his small, decrepit studio apartment at the urban center of the ever-expanding city of Raccoon; the only thing that Owen could _ ever _ think about was leaving, moving farther and farther away from the world, from himself, and certainly farther from the rotting, corporate-owned pisshole of a city that had damned well become him. The place where if the homeless people weren't mugging you, you can be damned sure that the greasy old businessmen were, and at the front of it all, a logo of polarizing red/white to mock his every step, to remind him of the life he could only dream of having and the reality he could only escape from at the bottom of a bottle. In his dreams, his house was a grand wooden abode, a large painting studio of Pollock-esque masterpieces, and windows that opened to a grand vista of sparkling water, lush evergreens and vast snow-tipped mountains, yet in reality, his home was cheap, dilapidated, the wallpaper ripped, torn and falling off, the ceiling; covered in dirt and mold, everything aside from the bed was filthy and reeked of regretful sex, whiskey and stale cigarettes and the roaches were practically eating him alive.

Owen tossed and turned in his bedside and looked at the alarm clock that read '5:43 pm'. It was obvious from the cool breeze and the dimming orange sky that summer had come to a close and winter was not far off. The leaves had already begun to change color, soon they would wither and die -- and with that thought of death, he stared out at the brightly lit clock tower of the Saint Michael's Cathedral and contemplated. He had tried to put his faith in a god, a deity of any sort, but there were never any signs for him, no path to redemption or saving grace. Nothing. Any god that there might have been had simply left, turning off all the lights and locking the door shut behind him. All of the textbooks and history articles that Owen had read back in high school only seemed to point to a chaotic and brutish system of evolution, adaptation, natural selection, and a bleak existential nothingness, the indifferent finality of rotting in the ground when we die. It took him some time to figure out that maybe, just maybe, that was enough for him too. Most people would argue that his outlook was too depressing, others would argue that it meant that he needed to appreciate his life because any day could be his last. For him it was the middle-ground, he didn't care enough to live, but soon enough, he didn't care enough to die either, it soon became the thought of life after death that was the only thing left that could scare him.

In the background of his thoughts, the television blabbered on, frequently interrupted by bouts of static from the poor wiring, the voice on-screen overlapped with the argument next door, becoming a slur of words and phrases that spilled into Owen’s subconscious mind and filling it with tidbits of useless bite-sized information -- celebrity news and gossip,  _ Garth Brooks, Nicole Kidman, Iain Glen, Woody Allen, _ political scandals with horny presidents, and today it was the usual news lady talking rather dramatically about a rat infestation in the local sewers. He figured it had something to do with Umbrella's poor management of their waste disposal facility -- if only because it _ always _ had something to do with Umbrella. 

Owen reached for the remote on the dresser and turned the damned thing off. It didn't concern him too much, he had always had to deal with rats. He'd constantly set traps around the corners of his apartment and under his bed and pray to whatever deity he believed in that he wouldn't accidentally step on one. A small part of him considered the recent apartment infestation to be the fault of the old man upstairs, he hadn't heard much from the guy or even seen him over the past little while, maybe weeks? But he could hear the TV on and every now and again there were footsteps, so the guy definitely wasn't dead but there was a strong reeking odor that made it seem like he was and was probably what the rats had been attracted to. He wasn't exactly sure how well the apartments other than his own were kept and what condition they were in because he had never seen any of them excluding his own. But he had entertained the idea that if his poor self-management was anything to go by, then surely the neighbors were mostly slobs with slob houses, with empty beer bottles, pizza boxes and various garbage bits laying on the floor, it was a nice thought at least.

Raccoon City was neither as peaceful an abode as he had hoped, nor as welcoming as the relentless advertising had made it out to be. All the billboards and television commercials painted a nice faux picture of green pastures, a place where classic Victorian architecture had blended with traditional midtown Americana to offer up an idyllic city of a new-age where the sun always shines, where families happily live and grow, where old people sit on benches and kids play in parks.  _ What a complete load of horse crap. _ Those same streets were always littered or under maintenance, the few people he knew were complete assholes, and having to watch his back for random attackers and tweakers on his drugged or drunken strolls through the nearby park had become an unfortunate habit.

Finally rising up from his bed with a yawn, Owen gave his arms and neck a good stretch, his joints cracked as he reached down and slid on a pair of jeans that laid crumpled on the floor directly beneath him. He grabbed a nearby shirt from a pile of clothes on the corner of his bed, sniffing it before shrugging ever slightly and putting the shirt on as well. He had remembered that he meant to do a bit of light shopping earlier in the week and decided there was no point in putting it off further, it made a decent enough excuse to get out of the house and get some exercise. Owen opened up the cabinet drawer next to his bed, he grabbed his flask, gauging from its weight that he hadn't drunk the last bit of _ Barcardi 151 _ just yet, he slid the alcohol into the pocket of his jacket before sliding it on and paused at the sight of the M9A1 handgun that had been peeking out from underneath numerous pill bottles and pornographic magazines where he kept it hidden. Owen didn’t tend to carry it around with him, even though constitutional carry meant he could without hassle, Owen tended to prefer the ease and weight a quick pocket knife instead, but he had a feeling, somewhere deep in his gut, that today he might need it. He grabbed the gun and closed the drawer, checking to make sure the safety was on to prevent any accidental misfires and slid it into the inner pocket of his thick leather jacket. Lastly, Owen walked over to the door to kick his boots on and caught a glimpse of himself in a crooked and cracked mirror that dangled next to the dresser. His hair was a greasy mop, his eyes bagged, his face riddled with stubble. He gave a quick scowl at his downtrodden reflection, before he turned to flick off the light, opened up the front door and headed out.


End file.
